Compass Points - MAGTF Ops
Marine units must be ready.
February 3, 2024
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After 166 enemy attacks on Americans in the Middle East since October 2023, and now with three Army soldiers KIA, along with 2 SEALS KIA in related operations, the US has struck back. On February 2, 2024, the US launched 125 precision missiles and bombs on 85 targets in Syria and Iraq. The US strike is already being called a success.
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Success?
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Nearly every hour yesterday, US representatives dropped the words, "We do not seek conflict in the Middle East." on the press and public almost as many times as US forces dropped precision munitions. But after 166 attacks it should be clear, conflict is seeking us. Before the conflict grows any further, the question is what is the US going to do to make it stop?
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By all accounts, the forces of Hamas, Houthi, and Hezbollah are owned and funded by Iran. If the US is going to stop the H gang, the US must deter Iran. But the US has admitted that in planning the strikes, Iran was off limits.
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It would be obvious to even the greenest Lieutenant that military strikes seeking to deter Iran, that do not cause substantial pain to the government of Iran, can never deter Iran. If Iran is not deterred, then the H gang will continue to stage attacks across the Middle East.
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There is little doubt the US strikes were executed with near perfection. Yet perfect strikes are still not a success unless the enemy is forced to change their behavior. If after the US strikes, Hamas, Houthi, and Hezbollah continue their attacks, then, no matter how perfectly the strikes were executed, the US strikes are a failure.
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Over-reliance on technology has caused a pervasive and perhaps willful misunderstanding throughout the US defense community about the success and failure of military strike operations. What is success in military ops?
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Once a conflict between nations or non-nation forces turns into military conflict, simply firing precision munitions from a distance does not create deterrence. Ragged foreign soldiers who fire missiles at US forces -- and who are not immediately destroyed -- consider their launch a success. Survival is success. Their survival and their success give them confidence and start them planning the next launch. Deterrence is only deterrence if it deters.
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When the US slaps down an enemy missile, the US thinks that is a success, but it is only a small success if the enemy keeps firing. The real measure of success in a military strike is whether the enemy is forced to stop. If air strikes do not force the enemy to stop, then the conflict continues and expands. In a growing conflict, it often becomes necessary to apply more military options. It may become necessary to send in the Marines.
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If the Marines are called today are the Marines ready? What does it mean for Marines to be ready? Particularly in times of constrained amphibious ships, and divested capabilities, how can the Marine Corps still be ready?
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Compass Points reader LtGen Newbold recalls one operation when Marines had to struggle to be ready:
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The 15th SPMAGTF
LtGen G.S. Newbold, USMC (Ret)
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When Marine forces do not get the support they need, what is the solution? The solution is strong leadership.
In the summer of 1992, the Navy explained to the Marine Corps that Pacific Fleet forces would not be able to provide sufficient amphibious ships to embark and deploy the 15th MEU, so that unit would go out with fewer ships. [Yogi Berra -- "It's like deja vu all over again."] The Marine Corps-Navy challenge of that year provides an example of how strong service leadership can act to reject unacceptable support for a global response force.
When objections by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Carl Mundy, and the Commanding General of I MEF, LtGen Robert Johnston, failed to gain a reversal of the Navy's plans to slice the capability of 15th MEU, General Mundy redesignated that unit. In his explanation, General Mundy announced, without equivocation, that the force cuts (roughly 25% of the standard MEU) meant that the unit could no longer be considered a MEU, and it became the 15th Special Purpose MAGTF. General Mundy simply wouldn't allow the shortfall to become a precedent.
Still not satisfied that the Navy had done enough to provide afloat capability, General Mundy and LtGen Johnston fought to get a MPS ship (the MV LUMMUS) to sail in support of the Amphibious Ready Group. With the capability of the LUMMUS added, the 15th SPMAGTF regained much needed engineering, sustainability, and equipment power if they were ever committed. The addition of the LUMMUS went beyond supporting the SPMAGTF, though, because General Mundy and LtGen Johnston knew that the MEF's Air Alert Contingency unit always on standby and other forces in I MEF could quickly fall on the equipment from the MPS ship and greatly expand the understrength Marine forces afloat.
15th SPMAGTF deployed on schedule, and the actions by Generals Mundy and Johnston proved prescient. Less than two months into the deployment, President George H.W. Bush ordered the SPMAGTF to provide the spearhead for U.S. actions to stabilize a desperate humanitarian emergency in Somalia. After the SPMAGTF secured the port and airfield in Mogadishu, the MV Lummus began offloading equipment and supplies that allowed follow-on forces to arrive and be sustained. The 1800 Marines of the SPMAGTF quickly were absorbed into a CJTF and the thousands of Marines who became Marine Forces Somalia. Bottom line -- the MPS augmentation and the Air Contingency unit deployment made the mission of the Marines a success. Without them, the Marine Corps would have had to tell the President that, advertisements aside, Marines would not be able to fulfill a global response mission. How do I know? I was the 15th SPMAGTF commander.
On the return sail to Camp Pendleton, the SPMAGTF and ARG stopped in Hawaii to provide the Commander of the Pacific Fleet a briefing on the deployment. The strong, clear message that the Commodore of the ARG and I made was that the mission succeeded by only the most slender of threads, and failure, if it had happened, would have been measured not only in loss of national and service prestige, but in lives lost of young Americans. The fleet commander blandly replied that if the mission had required more afloat forces, he would have assembled and deployed them when they were available. The obvious vacuity of the remark is that crises do not wait for forces to be ready. You get one shot. Marines must go out ready. Marines must arrive ready. Marines must be ready.
Could we do it today? It would probably be prudent to compare the availability of the MPF around the globe, and whether the Marine Corps has the same capability to provide 24/7, organized, trained, equipped, and ready air alert forces. One thing is clear –"It's like deja vu all over again."
-- LtGen G.S. Newbold, USMC (Ret)
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The 26th MEU is still on patrol in the Eastern Med today because there are not enough amphibious ships available for the next MEU to relieve them. "It's like deja vu all over again." Now, the US has launched 125 precision missiles and bombs on 85 targets in Syria and Iraq. Will the strikes cause Hamas, Houthi, and Hezbollah to stop? Or will the conflict continue to widen? When will the 26th MEU be able to leave the Eastern Med and return home? When will the ships for the next ARG/MEU be ready? Will the next MEU have both the immediate capabilities and the follow-on capabilities necessary to meet a large humanitarian crisis, and to meet any other crisis that may erupt next in the Middle East? The future holds only questions.
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Compass Points salutes the US military crews who carried out the air strikes yesterday and salutes General Newbold and all those throughout the Marine community and in Congress helping to make sure Marine MAGTFs always arrive at the next crisis fully ready.
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US CENTCOM (centcom.mil) 02/02/2024
CENTCOM Statement on U.S. Strikes in Iraq and Syria
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Office of the Secretary of Defense (defense.gov) 02/02/2024
Leon Trotsky, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”! The current US NCA may not be interested in war w Iran, but Iran is at war w the United States as I write this sentence”. Todd Bensman in his article “Part I of III Hezbollah’s ‘Unit 910’ in America: Recruitment, Targeting Jews, and a Building with a Doorman” identifies the tip of the Iceberg of Iranian Operational Units inside Our Homeland. Needless to say Iran is not the only foreign enemy that has infiltrated and set up operations in America via US Taxpayer funded free travel to the USA via Our Open Southern Border. Once upon a time US Marines Guarded the US Mail. So what does this have to do w MAGTF OPS, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shore of Tripoli” we must be an agile, lethal, scaleable,always ready, combined arms force ready to Fight and Win globally from Kansas to Tehran. Marines CBIRF, Marine Forces Command Indian Head, Maryland….their website still exists do they? If Unit 910 were to attack would CBIRF respond? Remember General Krulak initiated CBIRF after the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. Now back to Force Design, it’s no longer FD2030 as of this week it’s just Force Design, can we look upon this as a sign of life of an Eagle Globe and Anchor ie. we are no longer the Eagle Chained to the First Island Chain? In summary I agree w LtGen Newbold America’s 911 Force must have anchors and they must be chained to 38 Operational seagoing Amphibious Ships and accompanied by a modernized Maritime Prepositioning Force.
Newbold is in target. I will add that 1982 or 83 when we negotiated for hostages, we should have turned Iran into a parking lot with a minimum of loss of US life( just the hostages). If that was done we would not be in the succeeding conflicts or incursion since then.